Outliers know how to run on inside track

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2009 (6344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of notorious "outliers" will take the stage tonight at Westminster United Church.

I refer to the finalists in the Rose Bowl, the senior vocal competition in the Winnipeg Music Festival, which ends its annual run this weekend.

This side of the Olympics, it would be tough to find a more talented and disciplined group of young people.

Outliers, as defined by superstar journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his new book by that name, are those who achieve exceptional success in any field, from computer wiz Bill Gates to pop music geniuses the Beatles.

The fascinating tome, Gladwell’s third, has been atop North American bestseller lists since its release in November. I carried on a running dialogue with it over the couple of days it took me to devour it.

Earlier this week, I opened our paper to see a picture of Joshua Peters, the elder son of Winnipeg composer Randolph Peters.

Joshua, a 16-year-old violinist in Grade 12 at Kelvin High School, won this year’s Aikins Memorial Trophy for the music festival’s top senior instrumentalist.

I immediately thought of Outliers and how this high-achieving Winnipeg teen fit into Gladwell’s thesis.

As he explains, most of us think of successful people as having extra helpings of two necessary qualities: talent (or brains) and drive.

Having the right connections doesn’t hurt. Gladwell acknowledges these things as given, then goes further.

Leaning on academic research, he argues that success depends on a host of lucky breaks that have nothing to do with the individual or even the family.

Sometimes it’s being born into the right ethnic community, or at an auspicious time or place. The conditions have to be right to give you the opportunity to practise your craft to fulfill what Gladwell calls "the 10,000-hour rule."

He points to some research specifically about classical violinists. At Berlin’s elite Academy of Music in the early ’90s, the only difference between students judged "stars" and those judged good or mediocre is that the stars had practised much more — often for the magic 10,000 hours.

Well, Joshua was certainly born into the right family. Both his parents are musical — though his mother, Cheryl Janzen, went straight, took an MBA and became a financial analyst.

They’ve imbued their two boys with a strong work ethic, and given Joshua access to the city’s top teachers, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s Gwen Hoebig and Karl Stobbe. (Their younger son, Gabriel, 13, is already an eager drummer and speed swimmer.)

Interestingly, the Aikins runner-up this year, Alexander Howard-Scott, is also the son of musicians, composer David Scott and flutist Laurel Howard. If you look at the 90-year history of Aikins and Rose Bowl winners, you will see many names from well-known musical families.

Randolph, who also has read Outliers, tells me that his son has perfect pitch, a gift that occurs in an estimated one in 10,000 humans. He calculates that Joshua has already logged 7,000 hours of practice since he took up the violin (of his own volition) at age four.

An articulate and confident young man, he would seem to have it all, and next year he is off to McGill University in Montreal to begin a degree in music performance.

Mind you, he will enter at a time when music schools are experiencing increased enrolment and when the classical music world is hardly expanding.

"At this point I don’t have a plan B," Joshua notes. "That could be risky."

Perhaps. But the thing we all notice about brilliant young musicians, star athletes and high-achieving kids in general is that their focus and drive are transferable to anything they choose to do.

That’s another reason they’re outliers.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca